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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363377">Werecreatures and Magic</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jecooksubether/pseuds/jecooksubether'>jecooksubether</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tigereans and Weres [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Furry (Fandom), Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aliens, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, Gen, Original Fiction, POV First Person, Shapeshifting, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:21:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363377</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jecooksubether/pseuds/jecooksubether</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the author gets schooled, and consumes far too much tea.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tigereans and Weres [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914835</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Werecreatures and Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>May 15th, 2010</strong>
</p>
<p>I was sitting in the living room of my place with the Archmage receiving a lesson on the history and types of magic over some ridiculously sweetened iced tea. He was in full lecture mode, but was using a magically created whiteboard as opposed to a computer and powerpoint.</p>
<p>“There are several ways of accessing the energies that power a magic user. These ways are: Runic (written or traced symbols), Verbal (singing or speech), Vision (visual), Psionic (mental), gestural which is sometimes known as somatic, tantric, and blood.</p>
<p>The most common access methods are runic and verbal. Visual is more of an attribute that certain spells affect, like <em>True Sight</em>. Psionic is things like telepathy, telekinetic, etc. What we call somatic is a gestural or whole-body movement- Yes, there is a style of magic known as Dance Fighting, and no, it’s not that Brazilian style- that’s a mundane copy of it. Tantric is, plain and simple, sex magic. Blood magic is generally linked with evil imbuement spells, and is largely forbidden. I include it here for completeness.</p>
<p>Along with these ways of accessing magic, there are several different types of magic, each with their own oddities and structures. At the base, however, they all boil down to manipulation of the laws of probability using some form of energy. All of them require a certain amount of willpower and control in order to use them safely and effectively.</p>
<p>From what my eyes tell me, you play Dragons and Dungeons, yes? You are probably familiar with how magic works in that game system, so I’ll use that for making comparisons. Where D&amp;D uses schools, we call facets. There are eight distinct facets, but there is a fair amount of overlap between them. These facets are abjuration, conjuration, summoning, divination, evocation, illusion, enchanting, and imbuement.</p>
<p>While some of the names in D&amp;D were taken from our definitions, the descriptions were partially not. Ours are as follows:</p><ul>
<li>Abjuration and Divination are the same as how the game system describes it.</li>
<li>Conjuration is the creation of an object from raw energy.</li>
<li>Summoning deals with all manner of transport spells.</li>
<li>Evocation is the manipulation of energy to produce the mage’s desired effect.</li>
<li>If you guessed that illusion deals with concealment, then you’d be right.</li>
<li>Enchanting deals with altering the properties of something that already exists, for good or evil.</li>
<li>Finally, there’s imbuement, which deals primarily with manipulation of the life-force found in every living thing. All healing, resurrection, and necromancy spells fall under this facet.</li>
</ul>
<p>The traditional illusions you see up on stage is merely prestidigitation, or just plain misdirection. Not really magic, but some of the more flashier effects might fall under evocation or illusion. Admittedly, the bulk of the spells I will be teaching you first will fall under the illusion and evocation facets, with a short side trip through conjuration, enhancement, and abjuration. There’s also a lot of non-magical stuff you’ll need to learn as well, including your hated subject of math. Before we continue, I think a refill of our tea is in order.”</p>
<p>We padded into the kitchen and I got out the jug of tea as the Archmage put more ice and heaps of sugar into the glasses. Once we got things topped off, we settled back down in the living room and continued. He asked if I had any prescription medications. I nodded, and mentioned the adderal that I generally took for work. He nodded and stated that while the amphetamines may mellow me out, it may have some negative effects on my abilities, and advised me to discontinue its use while under his tutelage. He did mention that caffeine was not only acceptable, but encouraged.</p>
<p>“Caffeine and ethanol are responsible not only for some of the worst magic-related disasters of my time, but also some of its greatest and finest innovations. Another thing that is on the border of mundane and magic are potions. There are very few potion makers of any real skill, and the same master trained all of them. If you have aptitude for it, you’ll eventually learn from him. In any event, you may meet him in a few months.</p>
<p>Now, before I go further, I will give you a couple warnings: There are three things you <strong>MUST </strong>remember when using magic- It’s successful use depends on discipline, focus, and control. You <strong>MUST</strong> be in control of yourself when performing magic; You <strong>MUST</strong> focus on the desired effect, and you <strong>MUST</strong> exercise discipline. You will be manipulating the laws of probability, which requires a certain amount of energy. A larger effect requires more energy to perform it. Neither thing likes being tampered with, and if you lose focus or control, it will affect YOU instead. To quote the Magus Antoine ne Kan: "The quickest and most spectacular ways to kill yourself all involve magic. You can always tell where a Mage that didn't know what they were doing has been, because they leave a crater where they were standing when they made their last mistake."</p>
<p>Secondly, you’ll start to notice things in the world differently. You’ll also notice that not all mundanes are completely blind to our illusions, so you must keep constant awareness of the people you interact with, and keep public exposure of your effects to a minimum. In addition, there’s a list of behaviors for dealing with other magic users whilst in public. In private is something different, but always assume you are being watched in some manner.</p>
<p>Lastly, there’s the flip side to being able to bend the world to your whim: Nothing, magic least of all, is free. All magic users have one or more quirks. A quirk is something that the universe likes to do to magic users as a way of getting even with our poking around, or something that just occurs unnaturally as a consequence of having supernatural abilities. If someone says that they don’t have any quirks, they are lying, or have not used magic enough to discover it. Knowing what your quirk is, and taking steps to minimize it's impact on those around you, is very important. For example, my quirk deals with fire."</p>
<p>He took out a lighter, and flicked it on. It lit easily. Handing the lighter to me, he told me to light it. Around him and for about ten feet around him, it didn't light at all. "Now, this is just fire for the sake of decoration, or for the sake of fire. For some reason, cooking fires are not affected, nor are any fires that I personally make. It's a quirk. If you are extremely lucky, you will discover what your quirk is before it discovers you."</p>
<p>The conversation meandered around for a couple hours after as Ti’gra demonstrated various spells from each of the major schools, and had conversations on how each one worked. I also found that in terms of mythical creatures, I was hardly alone- There were therianthropes of several species, although Ti’gra did remark that it was curious that I was a feline; of the few that still walked the earth, most were related directly to him in some manner- I was not, however, and I was informed that I had a tremendous amount of ability. Most in his bloodline were weak, capable of only the most basic shifts, and not able to control the rate or proportion of their change as I was able. There were dwarves, hobbits, and even orcs, although the latter kept to themselves in the wilds of the world. The dwarves and hobbits were able to largely blend in with humans. The lesson ended with him showing me how to access one of the abilities a lot of mythical creatures had, which he simply called True Sight.</p>
<p>“I’m still not getting it,” I said after ten minutes of trying various things in full morph. It was somewhat frustrating, as there was no one way to access a latent ability- it was different for everyone. Ti’gra tried a different tactic.</p>
<p>“How do you shapeshift, specifically?”</p>
<p>I thought for a moment. “Well, I visualize the form I want, and the body sort of does the rest for me. Even the partial shifts, I don’t visualize the actual form, but a percentage blend of the two forms. My body seems- wait a minute. Let me try something.”</p>
<p>I mentally formed the words in my mind with my eyes closed, and as I completed the phrase, my field of vision was filled with see-through images of the walls around us, translucent images of the furniture, glowing objects that represented the active electronics, and my mentor’s true form; it wasn’t exactly like what I looked like in hybrid, nor was it what Ch’Mrr or the other male tigereans looked like, but a perfect 50/50 blend of the two. I blinked a couple times and the effect went away as Ti’gra said, “And so endith the lesson for today. If I might ask, how did you do it?”</p>
<p>I’m sure he could see me blush. “It’s part of a line from a very cheesy 80’s cartoon- ‘Grant me sight beyond sight!’”</p>
<p>Ti’gra could not stop laughing for several minutes.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A tip of the hat and eternal gratitude to Brian Antoine, author of the Family nas Kan stories, which provided much inspiration to me and helped keep my sanity over many rough years. His website can be found at http://nas-kan.org/</p></blockquote></div></div>
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